FICTION - AFK - Books for Gamers

Nintendo has continually set the standard for video game innovation in America, and the saga of Mario, the portly plumber who became the most successful franchise in the history of gaming, has plot twists worthy of a video game.

Through the stories of gaming's greatest innovations and most beloved creations, journalist Harold Goldberg captures the creativity, controversy--and passion--behind the videogame's meteoric rise to the top of the pop-culture pantheon.

The creator of the popular "virtual Lego" game, Minecraft, traces his unlikely rise from a disaffected youth who rose from a family marked by drug abuse and conflict to a multi-millionaire and international icon.

Guide to the 'greatest' computer and video game facts and feats. Features interviews with champion gamers, hints and tips to improve gameplay, profiles of the world's best-selling titles, and features on the latest games and consoles.

This Brief History provides a unique look at the history and culture of video games, starting with the 1960s classics like Pong to modern favorites such as Grand Theft Auto V and Bioshock. Focusing on creative and scientific advances between 1962 and today, A Brief History of Video Games offers a global perspective on gaming's past and its cutting-edge future with the evolution of virtual reality, 3D graphics, and thought-interface technology. It also addresses the design process from concept to packaging, considers the influence of manga and anime, and explores the relationship between video games and movies.

It's just another day of high school for Zack Lightman. He's daydreaming through another boring math class, with just one more month to go until graduation and freedom--if he can make it that long without getting suspended again. Then he glances out his classroom window and spots the flying saucer. At first, Zack thinks he's going crazy. A minute later, he's sure of it. Because the UFO he's staring at is straight out of the videogame he plays every night, a hugely popular online flight simulator called Armada--in which gamers just happen to be protecting the earth from alien invaders. But what Zack's seeing is all too real. And his skills--as well as those of millions of gamers across the world--are going to be needed to save the earth from what's about to befall it. Yet even as he and his new comrades scramble to prepare for the alien onslaught, Zack can't help thinking of all the science-fiction books, TV shows, and movies he grew up reading and watching, and wonder: Doesn't something about this scenario seem a little too... familiar?

In reality, Hiro Protagonist delivers pizza for Uncle Enzo’s CosoNostra Pizza Inc., but in the Metaverse he’s a warrior prince. Plunging headlong into the enigma of a new computer virus that’s striking down hackers everywhere, he races along the neon-lit streets on a search-and-destroy mission for the shadowy virtual villain threatening to bring about infocalypse.

From Santa Fe, New Mexico, to Edinburgh, Scotland, thirteen-year-old Adam Adlar must elude police while being hunted by a dinosaur come-to-life from a virtual reality game invented by his father, who has gone missing.

Tyler MacCandless is looking at a bleak future. With his father dead and his mother mentally checked out, Tyler is responsible for his older brother Brandon who's in rehab for heroin abuse--again. With no skills to speak of outside of playing video games, a fast food future is all but a certainty. That is, until the day Tyler's mentor Rick asks him to test a new video game. A good enough score can earn him a place in flight school. But then Brandon goes missing, and Tyler discovers the game is far more than it seems.

After being interrogated for days by the Department of Homeland Security in the aftermath of a major terrorist attack on San Francisco, California, seventeen-year-old Marcus, released into what is now a police state, decides to use his expertise in computer hacking to set things right.

A group of teens from around the world find themselves drawn into an online revolution arranged by a mysterious young woman known as Big Sister Nor, who hopes to challenge the status quo and change the world using her virtual connections.

Anda loves Coarsegold Online, the massively-multiplayer role playing game that she spends most of her free time on. It's a place where she can be a leader, a fighter, a hero. It's a place where she can meet people from all over the world, and make friends. But things become a lot more complicated when Anda befriends a gold farmer -- a poor Chinese kid whose avatar in the game illegally collects valuable objects and then sells them to players from developed countries with money to burn. This behavior is strictly against the rules in Coarsegold, but Anda soon comes to realize that questions of right and wrong are a lot less straightforward when a real person's real livelihood is at stake.

In the year 2032, after a virus that turned people into zombies has been eradicated, Josh is invited to join an underground gaming society, where the gamers hunt zombies and the action is more dangerous than it seems.

After a chance encounter with assassin Yassen Gregorovich in the South of France, teenage spy Alex Rider investigates international pop star and philanthropist Damian Cray whose new video game venture hides sinister motives involving Air Force One, nuclear missiles, and the international drug trade.

An astute teen, Yuuki Asuna spends most of her time studying for her high school entrance exams. One day, she borrows her brother's virtual reality game, 'Sword Art Online,' and finds herself trapped in its fantasy world. Soon, though, she learns the mechanics of the game, develops her swordplay technique and impresses a pro gamer who invites her to join the best players on the front lines. Is Asuna ready to swap her hard-earned education ethics for high-rank play in a virtual realm?

Tom, a fourteen-year-old genius at virtual reality games, is recruited by the United States Military to begin training at the Pentagon Spire as a Combatant in World War III, controlling the mechanized drones that do the actual fighting off-planet.

Emerging victorious from the Ghostlands after ending the undead Scourge's quest to obtain the Sunwell's potent energies, Tyri and Jorad's journey is far from over. Both are drawn into the Dark Portal and transported to the shattered world of Outland, where they encounter a group of enigmatic creatres unlike any they have ever seen: the incorporeal nether dragons.

Struggling to fit in after her parents' divorce sends her from Boston to her grandmother's house in the country, sixteen-year-old Maddy forms a manga club at school and falls in love through an online fantasy game.

When thirteen-year-old Josh's beloved older brother, Max, is arrested for murder, the victim's sister leads Josh to evidence of Max's guilt--and her own--hidden in their favorite online role-playing game and Josh, who was conceived to save Max's life years earlier, must consider whether he shares that guilt.

Fifteen-year-old Cat and three other London teens are drawn into a dangerous game in which Tarot cards open doorways into a different dimension and while there is everything to win, losing can be fatal.